This message is for middle-school, high school and college students --
write a MATHY POEM, enter it in this contest:
American Mathematical Society
Math-Poetry Contest Announcement
This link leads to contest information and rules for submission.
The AMS Poetry Contest was first held in 2019; here's the Middle School winner:
For me, postings on X (Twitter) are a frequent source of math-poetry news. Today I found this:
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| This link leads to information about Stange's award. |
A wonderful feature of the Internet is the opportunity it offers for rapid connection with ideas from people around the world -- and I have found delight in mathy poems from Africa, Australia, Canada, China, India . . . and many other places. Today's poem comes from poet Marian Christie -- who grew up in Zimbabwe and now lives in Kent, England (and has been other places in-between). (Here is a link to previous mentions of Christie's work in this blog.)
Here, below, is a screenshot of a poem by Christie that she posted recently on X (Twitter) (@marian_v_o) -- her poetic interpretation of the Pythagorean Theorem:
For some of us, holidays -- Thanksgiving and Christmas and . . . -- offer time to explore new projects. Here is a project for math/science students to try -- the Steam Powered Poetry Contest (entries September to April).
Students in Jr. High, High School and College/University create 1-minute videos showcasing their STEAM poems. No entry fee. Contest is open from September to April every year. More information here.
Below I offer is a sample poem (for which a video entry may be created) by contest organizer Heidi Bee Roemer. Find lots of samples at this link -- and encourage students you know to consider entry.
In the creation and development of both mathematics and poetry both PRECISION and IMAGINATION are important. Recently I came across the announcement of a book entitled Poetic Logic and the Origins of the Mathematical Imagination -- written by Canadian professor if semiotics, Marcel Danesi, and part of the Springer-Nature series, Mathematics in Mind, Here is a link to an overview of Danesi's book. And, in the publisher's summary of the Danesi book, we find this:
The aim of this volume is to look broadly at what constitutes the mathematical mind through the Vichian lens of poetic logic.
Reading Danesi's ideas and thinking about my own poetic musings has reminded me of a long-ago poem of mine, "Can A Mathematician See Red?" I posted this poem in this blog long ago (in August 2011, at this link) -- and I offer it again, below.
As I have previously mentioned, recently I have discovered mathy poems at the website poemverse.org, and I enjoy exploring there. One of my findings has been a collection of poems about geometry -- and I offer a sample below.
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| More Poems about Angles may be found here. |
Another poemverse collection is Poems about math class -- at this link.
At the website X (Twitter) one of my frequent enjoyments is a Scrabblegram posting by David Cohen, writer from Atlanta, Georgia. Cohen writes stanzas -- often poetic -- that use each of the 100 tiles in a Scrabble game exactly once. More than a year ago, alerted by blogger and poet Marian Christie, I found and shared a mathy Scrabblegram ZERO at this link. And here is another, Countless, found at here Cohen's website.
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| Scrabblegram by David Cohen (lots more here) |
This link leads to a long list of Scrabblegrams! And some of them are mathy!
Recently I have found a rich source of mathy poems to explore -- at the website poemverse.org. For example, there are Poems about Math Class and The Beauty of Geometry: Exploring Angles through Poetry and The Beauty of Haiku Poems about Math . . . . and . . . lots more . . .
Here are two samples, with a link to more:
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| More mathy Haiku may be found here at poemverse.org. |
One of the most active and effective ambassadors for connections between mathematics and the arts is Gizem Karaali. Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at California's Pomona College. Poet and writer as well as teacher and researcher, Karaali is a founding editor of Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, a peer-reviewed open-access journal that publishes articles, essays, fiction and poetry with a rich variety of connections to mathematics.
Recently I rediscovered online one of Karaali's poems, a villanelle published almost ten years ago in the Mathematical Association of America's undergraduate magazine, Math Horizons (February, 2015, Volume 22, Issue 3).
A MATHEMATICIAN'S VILLANELLE by Gizem Karaali
When first did I learn to cherish the bittersweet taste of mathematics?
Mental torture, subtle joy, doubt and wonder, me in meaning
Must have come later, after the games, the limericks, the lyrics.
Strange ceremonies awaited me, mystical hymns, magic tricks,
After the first gulp of water, the first bite, the first bloodletting.
When first did I learn to cherish the bittersweet taste of mathematics?
Mike Ferguson (America-born but long-time Brit) is a retired teacher of English and creative writing AND a poet. I offer one of his poems below (a poem developed from a list and found here in Ferguson's blog, gravyfromthegazebo). Not only is Ferguson's poem mathy and thought-provoking, but it also can be a useful example to use with students. One of the effective strategies to use to discover and gather thoughts on a particular topic is to create a list. The activity of writing the list often leads to additional creative thinking and -- if a poem is a goal -- the list can become poetic. If you've never done so, try it!
Established in honor of math-popularizer Martin Gardner (1914-2010), Celebration of the Mind Day occurs on October 21 each year. Lots of interesting information about Gardner and the celebration-day may be found at this link. This link leads to previous postings in this blog that feature Gardner and his work. Not a poet, Gardner called himself "an occasional versifier" and here is an example:
π goes on and on
And e is just as cursed
I wonder, how does π begin
When its digits are reversed?
For an array of mathy connections that celebrate the mind and stretch it, explore the links offered above!
Recently I have found a website maintained by Jenna Laib, a K-8 math specialist in the Boston area -- and at her website there I have found a posting of a Halloween poem with accompanying prose that considers the value of using numbers to tell stories. The poem is below -- and, along with it, the website offers many more.
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| More about Raffi and Ken Whitely available at this link. |
Mathematician Ursula Whitcher is an Associate Editor for the American Mathematical Society's Mathematical Reviews and a poet -- someone whom I first met at a conference, "Creative Writing in Mathematics," at the Banff International Research Station in 2016. conferences. She is a versatile writer -- with a long list of publications available here at her website.
Here is Whitcher's mathematically-structured poem, "Tuesday," first published in 2019 in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, at this link.
Tuesday by Ursula Whitcher
Sometimes it is not possible to mend
what’s broken, either if you meant
to prove something impossible, or else
to save someone. Your best friend has
not eaten for six days. Your father loses things.
Your brother lies.
It’s Tuesday, so the week’s no longer new, and yet
nowhere near done.
All you can do is move
and keep on moving, trust
time changes shattered things
and lies once known are maps.
Author’s Note. This poem’s form is taken from the structure of the field with seven elements: the meter, in iambs, follows a pattern based on 5, 4, 6, 2, 3, the nontrivial values taken by powers of 5 (mod 7) as it generates the group of units of the field.
Previous mentions of Ursula Whitcher in this blog are listed at this link.
The second Tuesday in October has been selected as Ada Lovelace Day -- a time for celebrating that pioneering woman and all women in STEM.
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, better known as Ada Lovelace (December 10, 1815–November 27, 1852) -- and daughter of the poet Lord Byron -- is celebrated as the world’s first computer programmer, the first person to combine the mathematical capabilities of computational machines with the poetic possibilities of symbolic logic (applied with clever imagination). (Many more biographical details may be found at this link.) And here is a link to an interesting article by Johns Hopkins voice Meghana Ravi entitled "Ada Lovelace found poetry in computer algorithms."
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